Earnings Labs

Henry Schein, Inc. (HSIC)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 4, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Henry Schein Third Quarter Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Carolynne Borders, Henry Schein's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Carolynne.

Carolynne Borders - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you and my thanks to each of you for joining us today to discuss Henry Schein's results for the third quarter of 2015. With me on the call today are Stanley Bergman, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Henry Schein and Steven Paladino, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to state that certain comments made during this call will include information that is forward-looking. As you know, risks and uncertainties involved in the company's business may affect the matters referred to in forward-looking statements. As a result, the company's performance may differ from those expressed in or indicated by such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements contained in Henry Schein's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, all comments about the markets we serve, including growth rates and market share, are based upon the company's internal analysis and estimates. The content of this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast, November 4, 2015. Henry Schein undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this call. I ask that during the Q&A portion, you limit yourself to a single question and a follow-up before returning to the queue. This will provide the opportunity for as many listeners as possible to ask a question within the one hour we have allotted. With that said, I would like to turn the call over to Stanley Bergman. Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Carolynne. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We are so pleased with our third quarter financial results, which reflected accelerated growth…

Operator

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Robert Jones with Goldman Sachs. Robert Patrick Jones - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thanks for the questions, Stan and Steve. Really impressive internal growth in Medical this quarter. Anything worth calling out as far as the drivers of that over 14% internal growth? I mean, looking back several years, I'm not sure we've seen this level of growth on the internal North American side. I just wanted to, I guess within that, also make sure that all of Cardinal would be accounted for in the acquisition-related growth. Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: So, that's a very good question. And I think you've probably noticed that perhaps in the last five or six years, our Medical business has gained momentum. This has been the result of a strategic planning exercise we concluded about seven years ago, in which we determined that there were two areas we wanted to focus on. One is the larger practices in the networks and what has morphed into what many refer to as the IDNs, integrated delivery networks and at the same time, focusing on certain specialty areas that are important to our position. (30:29) All eventually geared towards wellness and prevention, which falls in line with the healthcare reform plans. In other words, wellness, healthcare versus sick care, moving procedures from the hospital to the office, to the alternate care side. Our strategies are solid. We believe they are solid for many years to come. And we believe our Medical group has been executing very well. Of course, the acquisition of the Cardinal physician business and the integration of those sales representatives, including adding the Cardinal product offering to our Henry Schein offering, have all contributed in one way or another to driving,…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Ellich with Piper Jaffray. Kevin K. Ellich - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess, first off, I wanted to go to the Animal Health business. Steve, appreciated the comments on the normalizing for the agency direct sales switch. I guess how much did that affect the growth this quarter, and when do you think we'll see that come to an end? Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: You're talking about just the agency because there's two components to normalization, Kevin. The first is the shift away from the IDEXX sales product line to Abaxis and Heska, and we take out both prior year the IDEXX sales as well as current year the Abaxis and Heska sales to really show, excluding all diagnostic product categories, what the growth is. That ends in Q4 of this year. Separately, the agency sales switch was a negative impact of just under 3% for us in the current quarter. It's hard to tell if there's future switches between agencies and direct sales. We really can't predict that, but – so it's not something I could say is going to end or not because there seems to be every year a flip-flop from one manufacturer, from one to the other. But we'll continue to call it out because I do think the best way of looking at our real growth is adjusting the impact of agency sales conversions for ourselves. Kevin K. Ellich - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Sure. And then, Steve, can you provide any color as to what products or what type of products were switched to agency this quarter? Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President:…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jon Block with Stifel. Jon Block - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Great. Thanks. And good morning, guys. Maybe the first one in – I hope I have the numbers right. Steven, for you, just when I look at the updated 2015 guidance, obviously, relative to our numbers, 3Q was a big bee (38:24). I'm just having a hard time sort of tying out to the 4Q EPS number. In other words, I sort of have my out margins flattish year-over-year or adjusted out margins flattish year-over-year. After you experienced some really good expansion in the first three quarters of the year and you've got the restructuring going on. So, maybe you can help reconcile that, am I too high or internal? Do I have the numbers right? Any thoughts there would be very helpful. Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: Yeah. I don't want to get in to that level of specificity with specific margins for a quarter. But let me try to help you in a different way. So, there were a number of items, and I'll go to a couple of them, that were timing impacts, that were favorable timing in Q3, that reversed obviously in Q4. They include things like flu vaccines year-over-year. Flu vaccine sales were much stronger, up 12% Q3 this year versus last year. And as you know, flu vaccine is a good margin product for us. There's also timing of a number of expenses that we expected to hit and typically hit in Q3 that are now expected to hit in Q4. And if you add all those together, you may have $0.03, $0.04 or $0.05 of timing variances between Q3 and Q4. So while that reduces a little…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of David Larsen with Leerink Partners.

David M. Larsen - Leerink Partners LLC

Analyst · Leerink Partners.

Hey. Congratulations on a good quarter. Can you provide me with a little bit more color around the growth in dental equipment sales in North America? It looked like a very healthy growth rate especially relative to last quarter. Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: Yeah. It's something that – if you recall last quarter, we did say that we did expect to see an acceleration of equipment sales growth. So we're pleased that that happened. If you look at overall, just to give you a little bit of color, traditional equipment sales growth for the quarter was a bit stronger than high tech equipment but not much, probably somewhere in total of about 1 percentage point differential. So really good growth both on the overall high tech equipment category as well as the overall traditional equipment category, so not major variance but slightly better traditional equipment growth than high tech growth.

David M. Larsen - Leerink Partners LLC

Analyst · Leerink Partners.

Okay. And then, just a quick follow-up on IDEXX Labs, was that – how much of a headwind was that in 2015 in terms of revenue and have you sort of fully worked through that and filled that bucket? Thanks. Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: Yes. So, the IDEXX revenue in the prior year for 2014 was about $150 million of revenue. And we said we would not be back even on revenues in year one it would probably be at least a couple of years maybe into the third year for us to be even. It is a longer sales cycle to convert people. Not all veterinarians are eligible for conversion in the same year because of long-term commitments. So, it is a multi-year project. So, we're still negative on overall diagnostic sales. But again, long term, we feel, as Stanley talked about it in the previous question, optimistic about being successful in that category.

David M. Larsen - Leerink Partners LLC

Analyst · Leerink Partners.

Okay. So, I mean, if you did $150 million in revenue in 2014, did that convert to, like, say, $50 million in 2015 and then will increase to, like, $100 million in 2016? Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: Yeah. I don't want to make those type of projections at this time as to how much it is. I think it's too much specificity. We typically don't give that level of detail on a specific product line. But it's going to take two or three years really to get back to even on the sales line. By the way, on the profit line, depending on how things work, we may not need the same amount of sales to achieve the same level of profitability because there may be higher margin.

David M. Larsen - Leerink Partners LLC

Analyst · Leerink Partners.

Okay. Great. Congrats on a good quarter. Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: Thank you. Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Cherny with Evercore ISI.

Michael Aaron Cherny - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI.

Good morning, guys, and thanks for all the details so far. I just wanted to dive back in a little bit, to one of the earlier questions – I believe it was from Bob – on the Medical business. Stanley, you did a great job talking about the strategic plan you had put in place in terms of repositioning your sales structure. That being said, the last five quarters, if my math is correctly on local currency, internally generated revenue has really started to see the inflection point. Is there anything else you can point to – is some of this related to ACH-driven utilization? Obviously, you talked about Cardinal and to the benefits there. (45:32) I'm just trying to get through the pieces, because the step-up has been pretty meaningful and especially against the backdrop of what I would say is less enthusiastic overall utilization metrics. And so I'm just trying to see how you guys are doing so much better than what the rest of the market appears to be doing. Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. It's a very good question, and obviously, there's no solid data out there. There are a couple of factors. First of all, there is definitely a movement from the acute care setting to the alternate care setting, both in terms of physician practices, and I'm talking about GPs, although in some areas, the specialists, too, and the ambulatory care centers. So that's a fact, specific data, hard to get, but I think it's fair to say. I think as the Affordable Care Act kicks in, there'll be more people covered with the ability to go to a GP for a check-up or when they're feeling a flu or something rather than wait until they're really sick to…

Michael Aaron Cherny - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI.

Thanks, Stanley. And then just, Steve, one quick technical question for you. The euro has been all over the place over the last year. Obviously, you talked about the headwinds you had related to EPS over the course of the year. I believe you said, currency was roughly in line, at least the expectation for next year, call it, $1.10 or so. Do you pursue any hedging? Is there any thoughts, given the volatility over the last 12 months, 18 months, to do any hedging on the euro? Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: We actually took another look at it, given the volatility, and we continue to elect not to hedge translation adjustments. Really, it's not an economic hedge. Really, if you want to hedge for a long-term period is expensive and you're just delaying the impact until when the hedge runs out. We do hedge though transaction exposure. So, in countries where we're buying in currency A and selling in currency B, we're continuing to hedge. We actually increased the amount of hedges we do on transactions. We were typically hedging 70% plus of known activity. We're probably closer to 90% today. But we really feel that the translation exposure is something that we don't want to do. And quite frankly, I think that the volatility and being able to predict movements is difficult, if not impossible.

Michael Aaron Cherny - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI.

Understood. If I could sneak in one last question, I apologize for this. Is there an extra week next year included in the guidance? Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: Yeah. So, it's a good point. Yes, we have our 53rd week in 2016. I'm glad you asked the question. So, it's interesting because depending on the business unit, the level of incremental profitability in some cases is modest, in some cases is actually slightly negative. And that may sound odd, right, because you may say, how do you have an extra week and not have more profitability? But if you think it through, it's the last week of the year which is the holiday week. So, when you look at sales on Consumables, sales tend be very light that week because a lot of offices are closed and there's not a lot of ordering going on that week. Equipment is a little different story. But at least on Consumables, it's a very light week. And a lot of expenses, and if you think of payroll and payroll-related that represents at least two-thirds of our expense structure, you have a full week's worth of payroll and a partial week's worth of sales. So, everyone thinks the extra week is very profitable for us. It really is marginally plus or minus depending on the business unit.

Michael Aaron Cherny - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI.

No, that's perfect, and thanks for the color. I really appreciate it. Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: Okay.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of John Kreger with William Blair. John C. Kreger - William Blair & Co. LLC: Hi. Thanks very much. Can you (51:22-51:29) percent growth in U.S. and... Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: John, sorry to interrupt you, but you – the beginning of your question was not – we weren't able to hear, so maybe you could just repeat it again. John C. Kreger - William Blair & Co. LLC: Sure. Sorry about that. If you think about your U.S. dental consumable growth rate of 3.8%, just hoping you could elaborate a little bit on any trends you might be seeing underneath that, for example, growth in the sort of specialty procedures like implants versus the more GP-oriented procedures. And related to that, are you starting to see any increasing shift of some of the more specialty procedures into the general dentist office or not really? Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, John, I don't think this quarter would be an indication of trends per se. Having said that, I do believe that more procedures are moving into the GP office, and that's why, by the way, we entered the endodontic space, the orthodontic space and the implant oral surgery space in such a heavy way several years ago because our GP customers are performing these procedures. So, I think that is correct. I don't think any particular results that we may have may be indicative of the change. If we're growing faster in the specialty area, the reason is probably because we're underpenetrated. So, I would say in our numbers, there's nothing that can indicate one way or the other, although, obviously, there's a movement from the small accounts to the midsized accounts and from the midsized accounts to the elite, the large ones although we are experiencing I think the heaviest growth in the midmarket accounts, those are practitioners that own a multiple of practices, three, four practices. Yeah. And just on the pure metrics for the current quarter, our overall specialty product category did grow a little bit faster than the overall 3.8%, John. So that's part of our strategy and why we got into those product categories because we do expect them to grow at a faster clip. It wasn't a huge gap this quarter but again this is only one quarter and it was slightly faster. John C. Kreger - William Blair & Co. LLC: Great. Thanks. And just one last one, Steve. Did the price component of the 3.8% change at all versus what you've seen in earlier quarters? Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: No. I would say that pricing inflation for the year has been very stable. I don't think there's been any major movements. John C. Kreger - William Blair & Co. LLC: Great. Thank you. Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: Okay.

Operator

Operator

And we have time for one final question and your last question comes from the line of Jeff Johnson with Robert Baird. Jeff D. Johnson - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Thank you. Good morning, guys. Steve, I want to go back to one of your comments just on the dental equipment side. You talked about the strength in basic equipment. On the technology side, that side has been a little weaker this year. I know you've had some tough comps throughout the year from last year with PlanScan and what have you. But can you talk about maybe in the context of those tough comps, end markets, maybe some of the innovation where your suppliers are, maybe on Intraoral and that probably a little bit behind there? But just kind of what is it going to take to get some of the technology side of the equipment business on the dental side growing here again? Steven Paladino - Chief Financial Officer, Director & Executive Vice President: Well, you know, Jeff, mid-single-digit growth on technology is not a bad place for the current quarter. We are seeing on CAD/CAM a bigger increase in people electing at this time to just buy the scan-only product and not the full system. I'm sure you know we sell a few different brands on scan-only and sometimes that makes sense. I think that's ultimately the practice, I think we'll go for the full end-to-end solution. But sometimes, they just want to get started. And so, we're seeing a lot more people doing scan-only than we've seen historically. We did have a difficult comp with upgrades and very strong sales last year in the CAD/CAM segment. But I still think if you look out a few quarters, this is going to be a…